SPOILER ALERT: This story contains plot points from the Season 2 premiere of Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage on CBS.
Tension at the tire store: Now that Jim McAllister (Will Sasso) has officially retired from peddling rubber, Georgie (Montana Jordan) and Ruben (Jessie Prez) are finding that it’s not so easy run a business together — especially since they can’t seem to agree on anything.
Below, showrunner Steve Holland addresses the conflict between the two tire salesmen while reflecting on what he and the other writers learned from Season 1 of the Young Sheldon spinoff. More importantly, when can viewers expect the inevitable Georgie and Mandy divorce?
STEVE HOLLAND: You know, honestly, we had a pretty smooth season, but I think one of the things we realized was that it was tricky to keep Ruben and the store fully integrated into the story. That was part of our thinking behind having Ruben and Georgie buy the store together. We could bring those two worlds together so it wasn’t just a satellite story.
HOLLAND: We talked about it a lot. We obviously wanted to make sure the show stood on its own and the show was about Georgie and Mandy and the McAllisters. But it’s also a world that people love. We had these characters who were part of the family, so it would’ve felt weirder to exclude them. It would’ve been strange to have a show sitting in the same town but we never see Georgie’s mom or sister. It felt very natural to include them, but it was always in the forefront of our minds to make sure that they were servicing our characters.
DEADLINE: So we will still see them in the future?
HOLLAND: Absolutely. Yes.
DEADLINE: So after one season of multi-cam work, do you miss the single-camera format?
HOLLAND: Multi-cam is where I came up. It’s my roots in this business. Single camera is fun and different. You can tell stories in a different way which is freeing sometimes, but the grind of single camera production is way worse than multi-cam production so it’s a trade-off. There’s nothing quite like putting on a show in front of a live audience every week. It’s as close to theater as you can get in TV and as a writer, you’re getting real feedback in real time.
DEADLINE: How have your audiences been? Are they former Young Sheldon fans?
HOLLAND: Yeah, I think so. You can tell this season that they’re now fans of this show as well. They know these characters so much that you can get a laugh on a character beat that you know isn’t necessarily a joke. That’s been really rewarding to see. I think probably at first they were showing up because they were Young Sheldon or The Big Bang Theory fans and now I feel like they show up because they’re Georgie and Mandy fans.
DEADLINE: Why is Georgie so arrogant toward Ruben. Is he overcompensating for his insecurities?
HOLLAND: I don’t know if he’s arrogant towards Ruben, but he is arrogant in his own abilities and he’s very ambitious. He’s young enough that his jump first and look later [attitude] has always worked out well, so he hasn’t gotten the smackdown that maybe at some point he’s gonna need in life. He just thinks everything always works out for him so he’s arrogant in the way that he assumes his way is right.
DEADLINE: What is the source of tension between Georgie and Ruben?
HOLLAND: Ruben has obviously been there a lot longer and knows the business more. He thinks he should be heard, and Georgie is young and brash and full of ideas. Ruben is a little bit older and more mature. He doesn’t want to take stupid chances.